Back to You
by bulletproof
Summary: Logan's on a mission to get Max back, but can she return to him in the same state she left him in? Post-AJBAC. M/L.
1. The Weight of the Evidence

**b a c k . t o . y o u**   
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)   
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions. song by something for kate.   
"slow like honey, strong like music" from fiona apple's 'slow like honey'.   
us aussies have yet to see any of S2 so please excuse any inaccuracies. 

PART 1 

Logan Cale doesn't mourn like other people. 

Does not cry, does not mope, does not make a sound, cos damnit, between the cable hacks, recruiting and encrypted research, there just isn't fucking time. 

"Asha," his normal brusque tone cutting through air, cutting through heart, "did you pick up the shipment I sent for?" 

She sighs, breaking out of her daze, the usual daydream that flits across her mind whenever she's near him, whenever he isn't barking at her, "Yeah." 

The heavy box is dumped at his feet and she steps back, his eyes darting over the hard, well-travelled cover. 

"Great," he says, smile not reaching his eyes, not reaching his lips. Logan Cale doesn't smile anymore. 

She glances at the pits under his eyes, his sallow, sunken cheeks, and wonders when had been the last moment he'd taken a second to _breathe_. 

"Logan, why are you doing this?" 

Actually, she knows why he's doing this, has heard about the girl he'd left dead and cold in thick Wyoming forest, but still, she wants him to say it. 

He studies her accusingly, "Thought that was pretty obvious, Asha. Manticore's corrupt. Manticore's producing genetically engineered assassins to work the whims and wills of a yet more corrupt government. I have a problem with that." 

"Didn't seem to have a problem with them before," she spits out, and she hasn't meant for it to come out bitter, really, she hasn't, "you were fraternising with one of them." 

He turns, shoulders protectively set against her, voice ice-cold and it scars her deeper than any form of physical violence could. 

"You will not talk of her that way again," and it isn't a request, really, but an order, just like every other exchange that has occured between them. 

"You're doing this for her, aren't you?" she wants to hear him say it, she _needs_ to hear him say it, cos Asha is not the kind of girl to be lead around on a wild goose chase, nosireebob. 

But he can't say it, can't look her in the eye, just keeps fingering some damn locket that she knows he keeps in his pocket, always. 

"She's dead, Logan." Asha spells out, almost glib in the finality of the words, and she feels each one land like a blow. 

Well, someone had to say it. 

Logan cocks his head but doesn't turn to look at her. It's as if he's asked himself the question before a thousand times, "You wanna know why I'm doing this?" 

He barks a laugh as if to an empty room and Asha feels like a waste of space, but she's asked him a question, damnit. 

"Yeah, I do." 

His voice is soft and harsh and she's barely sure she hears him at all, but she knows the words in her heart, almost before he's said them. "Because it's easier than crying, easier than moping, easier than making a sound. I don't have the time to think, don't have time to breathe, don't have time to load my point-two calibre gun in the first drawer of my desk and... This is all I am, Asha. Manticore, they... they stole a piece of me when they took her away... and I can't let go of that." 

Asha's brows furrow at his phrasing, "You don't think she's still..." 

The word hangs unspoken in the air between them and Logan laughs because he remembers a time when he used to be so. 

"We'll see." 

* * * * * 

Max lies there like a dead thing. Like rot and ground and earth and watches as non-thoughts go through her head. 

She wonders why They would want to bring her back. This hollow girl. This dead thing. They broadcast inspirational, institutionalised messages to her, hourly, daily, but nothing impresses on this inanimate body, this shallow grave of bones and blood and deteriorating muscle. 

Heartbeat perpetually blasting through a set of stereo surround-sound speakers, Max is constantly reminded of the promise she has failed. A promise she made when she was unconscious, to some one-time brother, some-time more than familial bond boy who had clutched onto her like a lifeline and then given her a heartbeat. And then another promise to someone that still calls to her in her sleep, still shines like a beacon home in her soul, still gives her a purpose, a subconscious reason to breathe on. 

"We have all the time in the world," he'd said. 

Hope is for losers, but some part of her believed him then, that time maybe months, maybe years ago when she had made a run for the perimeter fence but her sister slave had caught her by a fist to the face and sent her sprawling back to her cell. 

And there she lay from then on. Not living, not moving, not making a fucking sound. Her heart beats, her lungs breathe, but she feels nothing of it. 

Shortly after her attempted escape, They told her he was dead. Her would-be lover. They said They'd penetrated her psyche and emptied her out like a vessel, his name, his face, his god-fucking-damn address, until she had nothing left to give, and then left her that way, hollow of memory, hollow of friends and lifelines and everything else outside of what They gave her. 

She has a new name now. 452. Short, sharp, succinct. She is a number, not a name, not a face, not a someone who could make it out there in the real world. They want to strip her bare and leave her with nothing but the need for the fight pulsing through her genetically-engineered veins, the lust for the kill pumping in her heart. 

But 452 has a spirit and 452 has a heart, her _brother's_ heart unrelenting in the body They gave her among other things that pulse and live and sing in her unrestrainable soul. 

And so things started to come back to her. Like her name _//it's not short for anything//_. Like her baby _//black like my mood//_. Like her promise _//fight them, Maxie. Promise me you'll fight them//_. Little things, but enough to keep her going, to keep breathing to find out what other tiny pieces she could find of herself in her broken down, broken into mind. 

So she kept on fighting Them, in her own little way. She was a dead-weight to Them, a drain on resources, but nothing more. She couldn't try anything, wasn't ready, not when she couldn't remember _his_ name. 

"Eyes Only," They'd told her, but that was all. Not his face, not his name, not how blue/black/brown his eyes were. That part of her seemed so closely guarded, even she couldn't root it out. Either that or she truly had forgotten him but for his voice, slow like honey, strong like music and a slap-in-the-face betrayal. 

"We have all the time in the world," he'd said, and she'd believed him. 

**END PT 1/?**   
  
**do the feedback :** bulletproof_android@yahoo.com | **see the sites :** paranoiapoliticiandiva.cjb.net 


	2. Say Your Goodbyes For the Hundred Millio...

**b a c k . t o . y o u**   
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)   
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions. song by something for kate.   
"i'm not here, this isn't happening" from radiohead's 'how to completely disappear and never be found'.   
this gets a little trippy in places. be warned. 

PART 2 

There is nothing solid left of her body, no rigid bone, no tense muscle, just liquid, liquid, beautiful liquid, everything swimming and sliding into each other, into one river and stream of consciousness. 

Max knows this needle in her arm, knows the slow like honey, strong like music serum that spills forth from its head. 

This is the time when time stands still, when yesterday, today and every possible tomorrow runs on forever and ever inside the universe inside her head. 

This is the place where they have all the time in the world and she isn't the one that kills him. 

He comes to her sometimes. He without a face, without a name, at least, not within her memory. He caresses and comforts her with invisible hands and invisible heart, and she doesn't feel so bad until she remembers how she betrayed him. 

She remembers feelings, not faces, sense-memory more than actual fact. She remembers feeling safe around this man. Loved. There is warmth whenever he slips over her consciousness. He's everywhere and nowhere all at once because she _knows_ this man, knows everything about him, really, but for the life of her, she can't remember... she can't remember... 

His name. Yes. Eyes Only. Dr Renfro always says his name with a hiss, running the words together until he is one, near palpable being, near palpable threat. She hisses his name and then threads the needle into Max's arm, whispering that if Max is a good little soldier, she'll just lie back and let Them take care of her. Nobody loves her now, Dr Renfro always says. There's nobody left to save her. Not now after Max had given Them everything they needed. Not now that he was dead by one of her siblings' hands. 

"We have all the time in the world," the memory taunts her, washing over her, drowning her. 

Not now she'd told Them everything about him. Not now when she couldn't remember anything about him. 

* * * * * 

The explosion rocks him to his soul and Logan watches, with detached interest, the scurry of motion it sets off. 

"We're in," Asha tells him excitedy, living for this, bloodthirst-fire-in-her-eyes-crazy for this, and somehow, Logan doesn't feel a thing. 

Feeling himself shift as the swell of motion of his unit carries him forward, he notices how much smaller he is than the explosion that just physically decimated Manticore's electronic nerve center, how lesser he is than the fifty-eight man crew he has managed to recruit, now surging forward on Manticore base-camp, old enemies eager to restir bad blood. 

The perimeter breach is deceptively easy, not telling of months of breaking into Manticore's proverbial back door, infecting Manticore's human backbone with revolutionary thoughts of humanitarian form, such that now within Manticore's walls, he has a network of key personnel aiding him, breaking down central command, infiltrating kids through and out of the system, bringing this place to the ground. 

Passing room after room of empty bunks, of empty cells and desks, Logan witnesses first-hand the freedom that he has granted, the victory that he has made, but he's not here. This isn't happening. 

This is the victory that he has made, but he can't feel a damn thing. Not when he's about to find out, for certain, that she's not here. 

The makeshift army under his command sweeps the place, making sure every soul, every half-assed science experiment gone wrong is liberated from its prison walls. Travelling through blue, shadowy corridors, they all shiver as a deep cold seeps through thick clothing, labs, barracks and isolation chambers all spilling forth Manticore's secrets as they uncovered each room. 

There isn't a door that hasn't been thrown open, a corridor that hasn't been hit. Within the space of a few hours, they'd covered every square inch of Manticore's base and there wasn't anywhere else for the crew left to go but home. 

Home. Logan almost laughs as the army packs up to leave. The job is done, the revolution is over and home is the empty place that his heart no longer lives in. 

She wasn't fucking here. This wasn't goddamn happening. They'd exposed every deep and dark corner, every shadow of Manticore's grounds and if she wasn't here then she was... 

Dead. 

Dead. 

Dead. 

The word pounded over and over in Logan's head, made his heart thud thick with unshed tears. From the second she'd been stolen from his arms, Logan had made finding her his mission, his reason for existence and now, now that he knew for sure that she was _gone_, what else was there... 

"Wait!" he heard a voice call from one of the trailing units, and the shrill scrape of metal on metal snaked through the air. 

Treading back, deeper into the heart of the base, heavy boots clunking on hard floor, Logan couldn't breathe, couldn't think, just followed the sounds of commotion until he found the last men out, pulling on a hidden door, pulling on a body through and out of it. 

"We heard the beeping of her heart monitor," they explained to him as he neared, but Logan didn't hear a word of it. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the girl's face as they finally pulled her free from her confines, body limp and boneless as it sagged in one of his crew's arms. 

"Max," he breathed, smoothing a hand over her cheek as she lay dead to the world but for the shallow breath tickling his palm, "Max, it's really you." 

**END PT 2/?**   
  
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	3. Sweet Thing, With Hopes Like That

**b a c k . t o . y o u**   
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)   
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions. song by something for kate.   
thankyou thankyou thankyou for all your kind reviews for a fic i wasn't entirely sure about. sorry for this part's delay and brevity. asha's really hard to write given i haven't seen S2 and logan didn't really wanna share his pain. 

PART 3 

Asha isn't sure how long she's been standing in Logan's living room. Maybe days, maybe years, but all she knows is that she's been waiting for this man for too long and maybe it was about time she stopped kidding herself. 

She peeks into the bedroom and catches herself forgetting to breathe when Logan's strong, elegant fingers trail a tickle-touch along Max's face, heart forgetting to beat as he whispers softly, desperately into breaths of her hair. 

It wasn't so long ago that Asha didn't need a man to survive. Didn't need to be hungry for him and hurting for _him_ to want to get up in the morning. She used to be all about the fight, all about that look of absolute fear in some low-down and dirty man's eyes and the dim recognition that shone there when he knew it was over. And yeah, there was always the end result, the happy townsfolk, damsels less distressed cos justice had been done and the day had been saved and yada yada yada... but God help her if she didn't live for the fight, if she wasn't all bullet-shells and broken bones and that drive in her blood that told her to keep on breaking. 

Asha didn't need a man. She had the S1W, Jesus, she _was_ the S1W, the living and breathing embodiment of the cause, was guns and toughness and none of the femininity that makes her weak to the knees whenever Logan remembers she's in the room. 

Now she can't seem to remember a time when everything _wasn't_ about him. When she didn't wake up crying his name. 

Asha's always been Logan's second-best girl, with Valerie, with Max. There's always been a reason that's kept them apart, a reason that Asha isn't allowed to love him and at the same time, there's always been some god-forsaken cause that keeps them together. 

Sometimes she wonders if that's why she's still in this gig with the S1W. That if it weren't for Logan Cale, for the off-chance that he'd come crawling to them for help, maybe Asha wouldn't be this hard, this practiced, this eager for the fight. 

Sometimes she wonders if she's fighting for him. 

And then other times, she _knows_ that he'll never fight for her as hard as she is for him, as he is for Max. 

Max. Funny that the girl that brought them together is the one thing that stands between them. 

Asha remembers that first moment when they pulled Max out, how Logan's face lit up like a little boy's on Christmas Day, how it broke her in two. She remembers how it almost killed him to carry Max into the house, across the threshold, straight through the bedroom door, and how defensive he got when anyone offered to help, when anyone got anywhere near her. Asha remembers a thousand other looks and touches he's bestowed on Max, a thousand other breaths and sighs and she god damn _knows_ that none of them will ever be for her. 

But Asha is a master at telling herself what she needs to get through the day, to want to wake up in the morning, and she'll be damned if she ever gives up on him. 

* * * * * 

Logan has all but forgotten the woman waiting for him in his living room. Has all but forgotten everything but this face under his fingers, this breath that cools his palm as it rushes out of Max's mouth, this dream that's lying deathly still in his bed. 

He touches her constantly to reassure himself he isn't dreaming, to make sure that yes, this is real, yes, she will be here in the morning, and that he won't wake up shouting her name in the middle of the night to an empty room. 

"Max," he whispers, breathing in the scent of her, tracing careful, hesitant fingertips along the outline of a fading bruise still staining her right cheek, the swelling around the inside of her left arm, the cut that won't scar on her forehead. 

He wonders how she got each of them, what hell she's been through, and comforts himself, time and time again, with the fact that Manticore was now burned to the ground by his hand. 

It's almost surreal, this, having her in his room, in his _bed_, that he used to cry into the pillow that her head now rests on. It's strange, now, that he can feel her pulse keeping time with his watch, when three months ago, she was dead. 

There isn't one part of him that doesn't remember that night in the woods. That night when she'd died in his arms with three little words hanging on the edge of her next breath, that never came. There isn't one part of him that isn't physically repulsed by the freshness of the memory. God, he can still feel the thickness of her blood sliding over his fingers, can taste the bitter salt of the desperate tears in his mouth. 

Christ's sake, the woman was supposed to be _dead_ to him, and yet, here she was, lying in between his sheets. 

And now Logan isn't sure what to feel. When they'd attacked Manticore, he'd been incredibly numb, when he thought she wasn't there, his whole world had been bottomed out and had left him with a vacuum of loneliness and now? Now that she was here, in his arms, less than a breath away, Logan was more confused than ever. God, even the empty desperation of mixed fear and hope between the time he'd lost and found her again had been easier. Then, at least, he'd had motion, things to do, something to work towards and if he kept doing them, maybe he'd start believing that he was getting somewhere. 

Now, it seemed, there was a whole world of possibility, there was the place they'd left off, all the things that he'd longed to say to her, they had a _future_ now... 

If only she'd wake up. 

**END PT 3/?**   
  
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